


Second Chances

by Glass Full of Sass (JaneGlen)



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Bittersweet, Follows show canon, Gen, Soulmark AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneGlen/pseuds/Glass%20Full%20of%20Sass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia was supposed to be Olivia's soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Olivia

**Author's Note:**

> I'm roughly putting Olivia's date of birth March 1980 and death in February 2001, Steve's birthday in May 1984, and Claudia's birthday in August 1992. The show is super wonky with Claudia's age, so I'll be adding further notes on that.

When Olivia is twelve, red letters, that look more old-school computer than handwritten, appear on her right palm.

 _CLAUDIA_ , they read.

Her mother shrugs over the type, saying that computers are becoming more prominent, and besides, only a few decades ago, most soulmarks were in cursive. It's the nature of people, and the soulmarks that represent them, to evolve.

Emma Jink’s soulmark is wrapped around her left arm, just above the elbow where Olivia’s father likes to rest his right hand, which, like his daughter’s, bares his soulmark on the palm.

 _Mathew_ , says Emma’s soulmark, in his tidy-printed-signature. It’s a warm, mottled brown, just like his eyes, which Emma adores.

 _Emma_ , says Mathew’s soulmark, in her loopy signature that is the deep blue of the ocean where he first saw her.

It doesn’t particularly bother them that Olivia is twelve-rather on the older end of receiving a soulmark-they understand that soulmates are soulmates regardless of age. And gender, too. Granted, soulmates are as often platonic as they are romantic or sexual, but Olivia suspects that they wouldn’t care either way.

No, the fact that Olivia’s soulmate is a much younger girl who will apparently type her name more often than write it doesn’t bother either Mr. or Mrs. Jinks in the slightest. It does, however, bother her brother Steve.

 

Eight-years old, markless Steve Jinks is utterly distraught when his sister excitedly shows him her new soulmark.

Everyone knows about soulmarks; the names that appear on someone’s skin when their soulmate is born (or, sometimes, soulmates) or when they are born, depending on who is older. Some individuals never receive any soulmarks.

Apparently, Steve had come to believe that Olivia would never find a soulmark on herself, and neither would he, and so they could go take on the world together: markless siblings living the high life.

He didn’t want someone-especially someone so much younger-to have such an important tie to his sister that they could steal her away from him. He expresses all this to a rather flabbergasted and devastated Olivia through an eight-year old’s ability to sob, hiccup, and talk, all while petulantly wiping away snot.

Olivia hurriedly reassures him, begging him to understand that no one, not even someone with her name on their skin, will steal her away from her baby brother.

“That will never, ever happen, got it?” She promises, “I’m going to be right here for you, even if I do meet Claudia someday.”

Steve nods and hugs her, burying his tear-stained, snotty face in her shirt. Olivia sighs, and squeezes him back.

xXx

When Steve is ten, and still mark-less, he asks Olivia if she thinks she will meet Claudia.

Many soulmates never meet. There’s a whole industry dedicated to tracking down soulmates-for a price-but it’s dying out with the advent of social media. The Jinks family isn’t too keen on splashing Olivia across the web, though, so their holding out hope that the girls will find each other the old fashioned way: by chance.

Olivia looks at Steve, and considers his question. He loves that about her; even though she’s four years older (which, to him, seems like a lifetime because she's so much taller, and smarter, and kinder), she always takes him seriously.

“I think so,” Olivia says, “I really think I will. I definitely hope so.”

xXx

When Steve is twelve, he still doesn’t have a soulmark. He checks his himself everyday, twists around in front of the bathroom mirror, but can’t see anything on his back.

He’s disappointed, but not devastated.

He asks Olivia if she thinks she’ll fall in love with Claudia. If they meet.

Olivia tilts her head to the side. She’s sixteen and beautiful, on track to be her high school’s valedictorian when she graduates. She still takes Steve’s questions seriously. And she keeps him out of trouble. Or gets him out of it.

It turns out that his classmates don’t appreciate him calling them out on lies.

“I don’t think I’ll love her like mom and dad love each other.” She says, “I’m pretty sure I’m heterosexual. And heteroromantic. But maybe she’ll be some crazy force of nature that I can’t help but fall madly in love with. Or maybe we’ll be forever in a limbo between romance and passion and platonic affection.”

Steve asks what all that means. He’s not oblivious; it’s the Nineties and his parents are liberal minded, but the vocabulary that Olivia’s spitting out goes right over his sixth-grade head. Olivia explains about orientation and identity and the politics of it. She tells him about the AIDS epidemic, the Stonewall Riots, and Pride Parades. She’s taking AP US History, and AP Government and she’s in her school’s GSA.

She smiles, scrunching her nose, and reaches over to ruffle his hair.

“Claudia and I will have to figure that out when we find each other.”

xXx

The next year, Steve tells Olivia that he’s gay.

She hugs him, presses a kiss to his forehead, and asks if he wants her to help him tell their parents.

Their parents are, unsurprisingly, okay with it.

If anything, Olivia thinks they knew, and were just waiting for Steve to realize it himself.

Olivia had been pretty sure for about a year, so she figured her parents weren’t _not_ expecting it.

xXx

Olivia is twenty, in college, actively trying to be an intersectional feminist, and still looking for Claudia.

Steve is sixteen, trying to survive his second year of high school, maybe-sort-of going out with a guy from the deli, and hanging out with Olivia as much as he can.

She’s busy, with college and everything, but she does her best to make time for Steve.

xXx

She would have been twenty-one in another month.

She would have started a summer internship at the Advocacy Center for Women and Children of Northern New Jersey in three months.

She would have celebrated Steve’s seventeenth birthday in four months.

[She would have met Claudia in seven months, on a trip with her Social Advocacy class to a conference in Nevada.]


	2. Claudia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first eight years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just, work with me on the timing, please. For their ages and for the timing of events.  
> I've corrected the birth years in the chapter 1 note.   
> Joshua was born November, 1979, and fails to teleport in September, 2000.  
> Claire is a couple years younger than Joshua.  
> Claudia is a VERY smart five year old (born Aug, '92). I tried to look up speech patterns, it...went.

Claudia is born with her soulmark looping across her left palm in a leafy green.

Olivia, it spells out.

Claudia’s parents love to watch their daughter trace the letters as she becomes more and more coordinated.

Her mom’s soulmate, Melissa, is Claudia’s honorary aunt, and Claudia’s father has never had one. Joshua’s a little jealous, being the eldest sibling and yet not having a mark; Claire’s had hers for three years.

Tyler, is what she thinks the messy blue scrawl on her right shoulder says.

xXx

Claudia has just turned five when she is able to grasp the concept of soulmates enough to understand why Joshua sometimes looks sad when she or Claire has their soulmark on display.

She crawls into his lap, nudging his physics homework out of the way, “Josh,” she says, trying very hard to pronounce all her words the right way, “itt’s okkay if you don’t ever have a ssol… soulmark, bec..because you have me and Claire and mom and dad. And mom and dad aren’t soulmates, so it’s not like… not like you have to have one to be happy.”

Joshua blinks at her. She worries that she hasn’t said it right.

“I forget how smart you are kid.” He says before she can try to explain better, “You’re too smart for your own good sometimes.”

He seems a little sad, but he’s smiling, “I’ll be okay without someone’s name on me, I just feel left out sometimes. I know you aren’t going anywhere though. And Miss Olivia better understand that you aren’t allowed to go anywhere, got that?”

Claudia nods, happy that Joshua isn’t too upset that he doesn’t have a soulmate, and she hugs him before spreading out on the couch, letting him get back to his physics homework. She likes it when he shows her the little line drawings that are supposed to represent roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Joshua says she’s going to be the youngest person with a PhD in physics, as much as she likes it, but she thinks she’d rather be the person putting the pieces together, not calculating how long and strong and malleable they have to be.

xXx

Two months later, they are all each other has left.

Melissa has four kids and the once rose pink letters on her cheek are now the angry red of a fresh scar, so the foster system doesn’t even pretend to consider her as an option.

They can’t keep the house, so Joshua helps her pack up the important bits: Claire’s guitar, a stuffed rabbit, their clothes. The system keeps the the two together at least, and, when he gets his high school diploma, somehow, by some miracle, Joshua is able to get custody, and an apartment next to some no-name college in Nowhere, Flyover State, that’s giving him a full ride.

They have their parent’s money, and the basics from Social Services, but they can’t be frivolous, and Joshua tutors Physics students so that he can keep food on the table. It’s sad, and they both have nightmares, and sometimes they argue, but they’re together, and they’re making it.

She’s doing well in school (Joshua fought to get her into a class level ahead and it paid off), she’s a Girl Scout, and she even has a couple of friends that think she’s cool enough to hang out with.

He’s hanging on, throwing himself into one project after the other, making sure Claudia gets her school work done, learning how to wash sweaters without shrinking them.

They’re survivors, and they’re making it work.

xXx

On her eighth birthday, they go to the pool, then for ice cream, and then Claudia opens a card from Melissa, and three gifts from Joshua.

The first is a beginner's coding guide, the second is a brand new Girl Scout uniform, with all her patches sewn on, and the third is the purple cd player she had seen in an ad a few weeks ago but didn’t ask for, because, even at eight, she understands their meager budget.

She hugs Joshua for a long time. 

She pretends not to see the tears that slide down his face. She knows he’s thinking that there should be three others at the table with them.

 

They spend most of that summer in the lab the college has allowed him to set up in. The old building is dark and cool, so they don’t have to run the AC at their apartment to get out of the heat.

Joshua is trying to teleport, and he’s got this old compass that he’s convinced will make it possible.

Claudia thinks it’s crazy, but she knows her brother is crazy smart, so she hangs out in the lab, reading or watching him work.

There’s something she can’t put her finger on, about the compass, and about Artie, the professor that’s advising Joshua. It’s a familiarity that tickles her mind, and she can’t figure out why. The compass doesn’t feel bad, and Artie isn’t creepy, but there’s something, which she will later learn to call déjà vu, which nags at her.

 

She goes back to school and a week later Joshua’s classes start. She still spends all her free time in his lab, and he helps her with homework and reads to her before bed, and takes care of all the little he’s been taking care of for the last three years, but he’s distracted.

There are darker circles under his eyes, and she wakes up some nights and he’s still up, flipping through old notes and making calculations and drinking cold coffee.

 

It all comes to a head in late September, two months to the day, nearly, before his twenty-first birthday.

It’s a Friday, and Claudia gets off the school bus at the stop nearest the lab. Joshua is still in class, but Professor Reynolds is in his office, and lets her into the lab. Artie stops by, seeming more grouchy than usual, and tells her that he’ll be back the moment Joshua gets out of his lecture.

Joshua is excited when he comes in, muttering about the compass and electrical surges, a spark dancing in his eyes. He gives her a hug, and sets her to doing her homework, telling her that he’s finally got it right. She giggles at his enthusiasm, and believes him wholeheartedly.

Then they talk to Artie, and Joshua leaves her with the grumpy adviser, going off to get the compass from Professor Reynolds.

Artie is nervous, and suddenly she feels sick to her stomach. They go to the lab hand-in-hand, and Joshua is there, surrounded by golden twinkles, and Artie promises, _promises_ nothing will happen to Joshua and then Joshua is gone.

Gone.

Gone.

 _Gone_.

Like their parents and their sister and their home.

xXx

They come and take her out of the apartment. They shuttle her around from home to home.

She is finally starting to sleep through the night again, when a shock laces through her palm. Her hand clenches compulsively, and she cries out.

The leafy green letters blister and scar overnight while she whimpers, her heart hurting more than her hand. By morning, her current foster family has called Them to come retrieve her, because they can’t handle ‘a girl with so much baggage.’

She never met Olivia, and yet Claudia feels like she’s watching Joshua vanish all over again. Every last piece of who she is has been taken from her now, and she doesn’t even have the energy to cry as she traces the tender pink flesh that so recently given her hope that she might still have a true family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but the more I try to work on it, the more frustrated I am, so I'm just going ahead and posting it before it drags me to a halt. I'm pretty excited about the next chapter, but I'm going to be super busy the next couple weeks, so I don't know when I'll be able to update again.  
> Hope you all have a lovely day,  
> Jane


	3. Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia's Death to Warehouse 13 Recruitment

Steve can’t breathe. His throat is so raw from crying and screaming that each time he sucks in oxygen, it feels like fire. He wants to punch and kick and throw things. He wants the world to stop and just fucking notice that his sister is dead.

Twenty and brilliant and amazing and kind and _dead_.

It’s not fucking fair and he wants to scream until the world knows, until every single person looks up from their newspaper, their commute, their essay, their dinner, and _knows_.

Knows that this young woman was loved and needed and was killed by some stupid asshole who didn’t know how to aim a fucking gun.

xXx

They bury her, and he is still angry.

Countless casseroles and sympathy cards litter the counter. He wants to burn the cards and throw the casseroles down onto the cement driveway until every dish has shattered.

He sleeps in her bed, won’t let his mother wash the sheets.

Buddhism has never felt so foreign to him. Meditation seems so impossible, and so wrong. How can he center and calm himself when Olivia is gone?

xXx

Life somehow, inexplicably, goes on. Eventually he stops crying every time he walks past her bedroom door. Eventually he can hear someone call for an “Olivia” without his heart skipping a beat. Eventually the trial comes.

And his mother fights for the murderer’s life.

Steve goes to college and doesn’t look back.

xXx

There’s a surprising number of Buddhists at the mid-size state university he attends. They help him come back to his faith, and become at peace with himself.

They can’t get him to talk to his family.

xXx

When his father dies of a heart attack a year or two after he graduates, he goes to the funeral, cries at the grave, and nods to his mother, whose elbow now sports a blistering scar.

Olivia Jink’s murderer lives because Emma Jinks fought for him.

What mother could do that?

xXx

Steve dedicates his life to protecting people, like Olivia protected him. Like she should have been protected.

It turns out that being able to detect lies is an excellent gift for a law enforcement officer.

Olivia, he likes to think, would be proud.

xXx

He’s been working for the ATF for two years when he meets Liam.

They don’t hit it off right away, but they are both determined to make something of their relationship, so it grows.

Steve really wants it to work, he thinks he might even be in love with Liam, but all the little lies add up. Every time Liam says “I’m fine” or “Just a minute” Steve twitches. He tries. He tries so hard to ignore it. To let it slide. But he can’t.

Leaving feels like he’s ripping apart everything he’d done to heal the scars from Olivia.

But staying felt impossible.

xXx

There’s a few more years with the ATF. He’s good at his job, even if there is always an awkward period when he transfers or they assign someone new to him. Being a human lie detector isn’t all fun and games.

But he’s saving lives. He’s being brave.

And then there’s that freaky electrical storm and the people that won’t stop lying and the truth that is so unbelievable he feels like someone’s pulled a rug out from under him when he doesn’t twitch.

And also the creepy woman in his house. Mrs. Fredrick. 

South Dakota badlands. Warehouse 13.

A red-head roughly eight years his junior, typing away at the ancient computer.

Claudia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a few suggestions for titles, but SC has grown on me, so I think I'll keep it. Thanks for reading and all the support!


	4. Claudia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claudia, eight to Warehouse 13.

Claudia learns how to take care of herself. She tolerates her foster families, she keeps quiet at every new school, her head- the hair now a dull red- bowed.

It’s lonely, and she’s not terribly approachable, so friends are few and far between.

She’s supposed to work with a psychologist, but she learns how to convince them that she’s doing well enough that they leave her alone. Not that the psychologists care all that much about just another system kid.

She’s eight, and nine, and ten, and she’s far, far too worldly.

xXx

There’s no one for her to call, but she gets her hands on every telephone she can, just to take them apart and study them. Radios she fiddles with until they pick up stations that carry the kind of music she remembers singing with Claire. Televisions, clunky computers, cd players, if she can get them (and hide them from the fosters) she takes them apart, recreates them, makes them work differently. Better.

She’s eleven, and twelve, and she’s taking all the control she can.

xXx

She teaches herself calculus and physics. She finds that coding and hacking come almost naturally. She discovers that there’s a market for people who can read computer languages.

She’s thirteen, and fourteen, and fifteen. Spending more nights on the streets than at the fosters-of-the-month.

Self-sufficiency comes easy. Self-love not as much.

xXx

At age sixteen, her lines are signed: t’s crossed and i’s dotted.

She’s got no legal footing except the part-time burger flipping that she quits as soon as The System emancipates her, but she’s free, and she’s becoming as adept at reading situations as she is at reading Perl, so she’s got a handle on what water is shallow enough to survive.

Every now and then a thought-fleeting-will cross her mind. She considers-only vaguely-attempting to recreate Joshua’s experiment, but there doesn’t seem to be any point, so she doesn’t put any real time into it.

Until she starts seeing him. It feels so real, and she knows it can’t be right. She starts pulling together his research, augmenting it with her own realizations, piecing together memories and scrawled notes.

The visions tire her. One day, she looks in a mirror and she doesn’t recognize herself. Bruises seem permanently formed under her eyes, creases in her forehead age her a decade; she feels ancient.

She panics, checks herself into psychiatric care. It only gets worse. The only way out is through, so she pushes and picks and pries open every book and laptop she can get her (restrained) hands on.

xXx

She’s fading and Joshua is looking more real but vanishing more quickly.

She’s got power surges marking out the country: she’s narrowed it to the Midwest, she’s focused on the Badlands, she’s got an address.

_Knock Knock._

She’s been preparing for this day. She’s checked herself out of the facility (or escaped, it’s all the same at this point, when one leaves a house of horror). She’s broken into the lab. The calculations are tacked to her walls, next to the google maps print-out of her target.

She goes in with a pair of electric handcuffs. She comes out with the professor.

xXx

She’s dying but Artie believes her.

Two others show up, Joshua reappears.

They’re inter-dimensional particles, her, and Josh, and Artie.

And then they’re back.

Joshua is real.

It worked.


End file.
